[1]An arshin is about 3/4 of a yard, and a pood is 36 lbs.
[1]An arshin is about 3/4 of a yard, and a pood is 36 lbs.
Nadya’s father thought for a moment.
“Do you know what?” said he. “You come with me and look at the place. If it’s necessary, I’ll have a wider entrance made.”
“Very good!” agreed the manager of the menagerie.
V
That night they brought the elephant to visit the sick girl.
He marched importantly down the very middle of the street, nodding his head and curling up and uncurling his trunk. A great crowd of people came with him, in spite of the late hour. But the elephant paid no attention to the people; he saw hundreds of them every day in the menagerie. Only once did he get a little angry. A street urchin ran up to him under his very legs, and began to make grimaces for the diversion of the sight-seers.
Then the elephant quietly took off the boy’s cap with his trunk and threw it over a wall near by, which was protected at the top by projecting nails.
A policeman came up to the people and tried to persuade them:
“Gentlemen, I beg you to go away. What’s there here unusual? I’m astonished at you! As if you never saw an elephant in the street before.”
They came up to the house. On the staircase, and all the way up to the dining-room where the elephant was to go, every door was opened wide; the latches had all been pushed down with a hammer. It was just the same as had been done once when they brought a large wonder-working ikon into the house.
But when he came to the staircase the elephant stopped in alarm, and refused to go on.
“You must get him some dainty to eat,” said the German.... “A sweet cake or something.... But ... Tommy! ... Oho-ho ... Tommy!”
Nadya’s father ran off to a neighbouring confectioner’s and bought a large round pistachio tart. The elephant looked as if he would like to eat it at one gulp, and the cardboard box it was in as well, but the German gave him only a quarter of the tart.... Tommy evidently liked it, and stretched out his trunk for a second morsel. But the German was cunning. Holding the tart in his hand he went up the staircase, step by step, and the elephant unwillingly followed him with outstretched trunk and bristling ears. On the landing Tommy was given a second piece.
In this way they brought him into the dining-room, from whence all the furniture had been taken out beforehand, and the floor had been strewn with a thick layer of straw.... Tommy was fastened by the leg to a ring which had been screwed into the floor. They put some fresh carrots, cabbages and turnips in front of him. The German stretched himself out on a sofa by Tommy’s side. The lights were put out, and everybody went to bed.
VI
Next morning the little girl woke very early, and asked, first thing:
“The elephant? Has he come?”
“Yes, he’s come,” said mamma; “but he says that Nadya must first of all be washed, and then eat a soft-boiled egg and drink some hot milk.”
“Is he good?”
“Yes, he’s good. Eat it up, dear. We’ll go and see him in a minute.”
“Is he funny?”
“Yes, a little. Put on your warm bodice.”
The egg was quickly eaten, and the milk drunk. Nadya was put in the perambulator in which she used to be taken out when she was too small to walk by herself, and wheeled into the dining-room.
The elephant looked much larger than Nadya had thought when she saw it in a picture. He was only just a little lower than the top of the door, and half as long as the dining-room. He had thick skin, in heavy folds. His legs were thick as pillars. His long tail looked something like a broom at the end. His head had great lumps on it. His ears were as large as shovels, and were hanging down. His eyes were quite tiny, but they looked wise and kind. His tusks had been cut off. His trunk was like a long snake and had two nostrils at the end, with a moving flexible finger between them. If the elephant had stretched out his trunk to its full length, it would probably have reached to the window.
The little girl was not at all frightened. She was only just a little astounded by the enormous size of the animal. But Polya, the sixteen-year-old nursemaid, began to whimper in terror.
The elephant’s master, the German, came up to the perambulator and said:
“Good morning, young lady. Don’t be afraid, please. Tommy’s very good, and he likes children.”
The little girl held out her little white hand to the German.
“Good morning,” she said in answer. “How are you? I’m not in the least afraid. What’s his name?”
“Tommy.”
“Good morning, Tommy,” said the child, with a bow. “How did you sleep last night?”
She held out her hand to him. The elephant took it cautiously and pressed her thin fingers with his movable strong one, and he did this much more gently than Dr. Michael Petrovitch. Then he nodded his head, and screwed up his little eyes as if he were laughing.
“Does he understand everything?” asked the little girl of the German.
“Oh, absolutely everything, miss.”
“Only he can’t speak.”
“No, he can’t speak. Do you know, I’ve got a little girl just as small as you. Her name’s Lisa. Tommy’s a great, a very great, friend of hers.”
“And you, Tommy, have you had any tea yet?” asked Nadya.
The elephant stretched out his trunk and blew out a warm breath into the little girl’s face, making her hair puff out at each side.
Nadya laughed and clapped her hands. The German laughed out loud too. He was also large and fat, and good-natured like the elephant, and Nadya thought they looked like one another. Perhaps they were relations.
“No, he hasn’t had tea, miss. But he likes to drink sugar-water. And he’s very fond of rolls.”
Some rolls were brought in on a tray. The little girl handed some to her guest. He caught a roll cleverly with his finger, and turning up his trunk into a ring hid the roll somewhere underneath his head, where one could see his funny three-cornered, hairy, lower lip moving, and hear the roll rustling against the dry skin. Tommy did the same with a second roll, and a third, and a fourth and a fifth, nodding his head and wrinkling up his little eyes still more with satisfaction. And the little girl laughed delightedly.
When the rolls were all eaten, Nadya presented her dolls to the elephant.
“Look, Tommy, this nicely-dressed doll is Sonya. She’s a very good child, but a little naughty sometimes, and doesn’t want to eat her soup. This one is Natasha, Sonya’s daughter. She’s begun to learn already, and she knows almost all her letters. And this one is Matreshka. She was my very first doll. Look, she hasn’t got any nose and her head’s been stuck on, and she’s lost all her hair. But I can’t turn an old woman out of the house. Can I, Tommy? She used to be Sonya’s mother, but now she’s the cook. Let’s have a game, Tommy; you be the father and I’ll be the mother, and these shall be our children.”
Tommy agreed. He laughed, took Matreshka by the neck and put her in his mouth. But this was only a joke. After biting the doll a little he put her back again on the little girl’s lap, just a little wet and crumpled.
Then Nadya showed him a large picture-book, and explained:
“This is a horse, this is a canary, this is a gun.... Look, there’s a cage with a bird inside; here’s a pail, a looking-glass, a stove, a spade, a raven.... And here, just look, here’s an elephant. It’s not at all like you, is it? Is it possible an elephant could be so small, Tommy?”
Tommy thought that there were no elephants in the world as small as that. He didn’t seem to like that picture. He took hold of the edge of the page with his finger and turned it over.
It was dinner-time now, but the little girl couldn’t tear herself away from the elephant. The German came to the rescue.
“If you allow me, I will arrange it all. They can dine together.”
He ordered the elephant to sit down, and the obedient animal did so, shaking all the floor of the whole flat, making all the china on the sideboard jingle, and the people downstairs were sprinkled over with bits of plaster falling from the ceiling. The little girl sat opposite the elephant. The table was put between them. A tablecloth was tied round the elephant’s neck, and the new friends began their dinner. The little girl had chicken broth and cutlets, the elephant had various vegetables and salad. The little girl had a liqueur glass full of sherry, and the elephant had some warm water with a glassful of rum in it, and he sucked up this liquid through his trunk with great pleasure from a soup tureen. Then they had the sweet course—the little girl a cup of cocoa, and the elephant a tart, a walnut one this time. The German, meanwhile, sat with papa in the drawing-room, and, with as much pleasure as the elephant, drank beer, only in greater quantities.
After dinner some visitors came to see papa, and they were warned in the hall about the elephant so that they should not be frightened. At first they couldn’t believe it, but when they saw Tommy they pressed themselves close up against the door.
“Don’t be afraid, he’s good,” said the little girl soothingly.
But the visitors quickly hurried into the drawing-room, and after having sat there for five minutes took their departure.
The evening came. It grew late, and time for the little girl to go to bed. But they couldn’t get her away from the elephant. She dropped asleep by his side presently, and then they carried her off to the nursery. She didn’t wake up, even when she was being undressed.
That night Nadya dreamed that she was married to Tommy and that they had many children, tiny, jolly, little baby elephants. The elephant, whom they took back at night to the menagerie, also dreamed of the sweet and affectionate little girl. He dreamt, too, that he had a large tart with walnuts and pistachios as big as a gate....
Next morning the little girl woke, fresh and healthy, and as she used to do before her illness, cried out, in a voice to be heard all over the house, loudly and impatiently:
“I want some milk.”
Hearing this cry, in her bedroom mamma crossed herself devoutly.
But the little girl remembered what had happened yesterday, and she asked:
“Where’s the elephant?”
They explained to her that the elephant had been obliged to go home, that he had children who couldn’t be left by themselves, but that he had left a message for Nadya to say that he hoped she would come and see him as soon as she was well.
The little girl smiled slyly and said:
“Tell Tommy that I’m quite well now.”
It was between six and seven o’clock on a fine September morning when the eighteen-months-old pointer, Jack, a brown, long-eared, frisky animal, started out with the cook, Annushka, to market. He knew the way perfectly well, and so ran confidently on in front of her, sniffing at the curbstones as he went and stopping at the crossings to see if Annushka were following. Finding affirmation in her face, and the direction in which she was going, he would turn again with a decisive movement and rush on in a lively gallop.
On one occasion, however, when he turned round near a familiar sausage-shop, Jack could not see Annushka. He dashed back so hastily that his left ear was turned inside out as he went. But Annushka was not to be seen at the cross-roads. So Jack resolved to find his way by scent. He stopped, cautiously raised his wet sensitive nose, and tried in all directions to recognise the familiar scent of Annushka’s dress, the smell of the dirty kitchen-table and mottled soap. But just at that moment a lady came hurriedly past him, and brushing up against his side with her rustling skirt she left behind a strong wave of disgusting Oriental perfume. Jack moved his head from side to side in vexation. The trail of Annushka was entirely lost.
But he was not upset by this. He knew the town well and could always find his way home easily—all he had to do was to go to the sausage-shop, then to the greengrocer’s, then turn to the left and go past a grey house from the basement of which there was always wafted a smell of burning fat, and he would be in his own street. Jack did not hurry. The morning was fresh and clear, and in the pure, softly transparent and rather moist air, all the various odours of the town had an unusual refinement and distinctness. Running past the post-office, with his tail stuck out as stiff as a rod and his nostrils all trembling with excitement, Jack could have sworn that only a moment before a large, mouse-coloured, oldish dog had stopped there, a dog who was usually fed on oatmeal porridge.
And after running along about two hundred paces, he actually saw this dog, a cowardly, sober-looking brute. His ears had been cropped, and a broad, worn, strap was dangling from his neck.
The dog noticed Jack, and stopped, half turning back on his steps. Jack curled his tail in the air provokingly and began to walk slowly round the other, with an air of looking somewhere to one side. The mouse-coloured dog also raised his tail and showed a broad row of white teeth. Then they both growled, turning their heads away from one another as they did so, and trying, as it were, to swallow something which stuck in their throats.
“If he says anything insulting to my honour, or the honour of any well-bred pointer, I shall fasten my teeth in his side, near his left hind-leg,” thought Jack to himself. “Of course, he is stronger than I am, but he is stupid and clumsy. Look how he stands there, like a dummy, and has no idea that all his left flank is open to attack.”
And suddenly ... something inexplicable and almost supernatural happened. The other dog unexpectedly threw himself on his back and was dragged by some unseen force from the pathway into the road. Directly afterwards this same unseen power grasped Jack by the throat ... he stood firm on his fore-legs and shook his head furiously. But the invisible “something” was pulled so tight round his neck that the brown pointer became unconscious.[1]
[1]Some municipalities in Russia provide a man and a cart to take off stray dogs. Jack had been suddenly netted by the dog-man.
[1]Some municipalities in Russia provide a man and a cart to take off stray dogs. Jack had been suddenly netted by the dog-man.
He came to his senses again in a stuffy iron cage, which was jolting and shaking as it was drawn along the cobbled roadway, on a badly-jointed vehicle trembling in all its parts. From its acrid doggy odour Jack guessed at once that this cart must have been used for years to convey dogs of all breeds and all ages. On the box in front sat two men, whose out-ward appearance was not at all calculated to inspire confidence.
There was already a sufficiently large company in the cart. First of all, Jack noticed the mouse-coloured dog whom he had just met and quarrelled with in the street. He was standing with his head stuck out between two of the iron bars, and he whined pitifully as his body was jolted backwards and forwards by the movement of the cart. In the middle of the cage lay an old white poodle, his wise-looking head lying between his gouty paws. His coat was cut to make him look like a lion, with tufts left on his knees and at the end of his tail. The poodle had apparently resigned himself to his situation with a stoic philosophy, and if he had not sighed occasionally and wrinkled his brows, it might have been thought that he slept. By his side, trembling from agitation and the cold of the early morning, sat a fine well-kept greyhound, with long thin legs and sharp-pointed head. She yawned nervously from time to time, rolling up her rosy little tongue into a tube, accompanying the yawn with a long-drawn-out, high-pitched whine.... Near the back of the cage, pressed close up to the bars, was a black dachshund, with smooth skin dappled with yellow on the breast and above the eyes. She could not get over her astonishment at her position, and she looked a strangely comical figure with her flopping paws and crocodile body, and the serious expression of her head with its ears reaching almost to the ground.
Besides this more or less distinguished society, there were in the cage two unmistakable yard dogs. One of them was that sort of dog which is generally called Bouton, and is always noted for its meanness of disposition. She was a shaggy, reddish-coloured animal with a shaggy tail, curled up like the figure 9. She had been the first of the dogs to be captured, and she had apparently become so accustomed to her position that she had for some time past made many efforts to begin an interesting conversation with someone. The last dog of all was out of sight, he had been driven into the darkest corner, and lay there curled up in a heap. He had only moved once all the time, and that had been to growl at Jack when he had found himself near him. Everyone in the company felt a strong antipathy against him. In the first place, he was smeared all over with a violet colour, the work of certain journeyman whitewashers; secondly, his hair was rough and bristly and uncombed; thirdly, he was evidently mangy, hungry, strong and daring—this had been quite evident in the resolute push of his lean body with which he had greeted the arrival of the unconscious Jack.
There was silence for a quarter of an hour. At last Jack, whose healthy sense of humour never forsook him under any circumstances, remarked in a jaunty tone:
“The adventure begins to be interesting. I am curious to know where these gentlemen will make their first stopping place.”
The old poodle did not like the frivolous tone of the brown pointer. He turned his head slowly in Jack’s direction, and said sharply, with a cold sarcasm:
“I can satisfy your curiosity, young man. These gentlemen will make their first stopping place at the slaughter-house.”
“Where? Pardon me, please, I didn’t catch the word,” muttered Jack, sitting down involuntarily, for his legs had suddenly begun to tremble. “You were pleased to say—at the s-s ...”
“Yes, at the slaughter-house,” repeated the poodle coldly, turning his head away.
“Pardon me, but I don’t quite understand.... Slaughter-house? ... What kind of an institution is that? Won’t you be so good as to explain?”
The poodle was silent. But as the greyhound and the terrier both joined their petition to Jack’s, the old poodle, who did not wish to appear impolite in the presence of ladies, felt obliged to enter into certain details.
“Well, you seemesdames,it is a sort of large courtyard surrounded by a high fence with sharp points, where they shut in all dogs found wandering in the streets. I’ve had the unhappiness to be taken there three times already.”
“I’ve never seen you!” was heard in a hoarse voice from the dark corner. “And this is the seventh time I’ve been there.”
There was no doubt that the voice from the dark corner belonged to the violet-coloured dog. The company was shocked at the interruption of their conversation by this rude person, and so pretended not to hear the remark. But Bouton, with the cringing eagerness of an upstart in society, cried out: “Please don’t interfere in other people’s conversation unless you’re asked,” and then turned at once to the important-looking mouse-coloured dog for approbation.
“I’ve been there three times,” the poodle went on, “but my master has always come and fetched me away again. I play in a circus, and you understand that I am of some value. Well, in this unpleasant place they have a collection of two or three hundred dogs....”
“But, tell me ... is there good society there?” asked the greyhound affectedly.
“Sometimes. They feed us very badly and give us little to eat. Occasionally one of the dogs disappears, and then they give us a dinner of ...”
In order to heighten the effect of his words, the poodle made a slight pause, looked round on his audience, and then added with studied indifference:
—“Of dog’s flesh.”
At these words the company was filled with terror and indignation.
“Devil take it ... what low-down scoundrelism!” exclaimed Jack.
“I shall faint ... I feel so ill,” murmured the greyhound.
“That’s dreadful ... dreadful ...” moaned the dachshund.
“I’ve always said that men were scoundrels,” snarled the mouse-coloured dog.
“What a strange death!” sighed Bouton.
But from the dark corner was heard once more the voice of the violet-coloured dog. With gloomy and cynical sarcasm he said:
“The soup’s not so bad, though—it’s not at all bad, though, of course, some ladies who are accustomed to eat chicken cutlets would find dog’s flesh a little too tough.”
The poodle paid no attention to this rude remark, but went on:
“And afterwards I gathered from the manager’s talk that our late companion’s skin had gone to make ladies’ gloves. But ... prepare your nerves,mesdames ...but, this is nothing.... In order to make the skin softer and more smooth, it must be taken from the living animal.”
Cries of despair broke in upon the poodle’s speech.
“How inhuman!”
“What mean conduct!”
“No, that can’t be true!”
“O Lord!”
“Murderers!”
“No, worse than murderers!”
After this outburst there was a strained and melancholy silence. Each of them had a mental picture, a fearful foreboding of what it might be to be skinned alive.
“Ladies and gentlemen, is there no way of getting all honourable dogs free, once and for all, from their shameful slavery to mankind?” cried Jack passionately.
“Be so good as to find a way,” said the old poodle ironically.
The dogs all began to try and think of a way.
“Bite them all, and have an end of it!” said the big dog in his angry bass.
“Yes, that’s the way; we need a radical remedy,” seconded the servile Bouton. “In the end they’ll be afraid of us.”
“Yes, bite them all—that’s a splendid idea,” said the old poodle. “But what’s your opinion, dear sirs, about their long whips? No doubt you’re acquainted with them!”
“H’m.” The dog coughed and cleared his throat.
“H’m,” echoed Bouton.
“No, take my word for it, gentlemen, we cannot struggle against men. I’ve lived in this world for some time, and I’ve not had a bad life.... Take for example such simple things as kennels, whips, chains, muzzles—things, I imagine, not unknown to any one of us. Let us suppose that we dogs succeed in thinking out a plan which will free us from these things. Will not man then arm himself with more perfect instruments? There is no doubt that he will. Haven’t you seen what instruments of torture they make for one another? No, we must submit to them, gentlemen, that’s all about it. It’s a law of Nature.”
“Well, he’s shown us his philosophy,” whispered the dachshund in Jack’s ear. “I’ve no patience with these old folks and their teaching.”
“You’re quite right,mademoiselle,” said Jack, gallantly wagging his tail.
The mouse-coloured dog was looking very melancholy and snapping at the flies. He drawled out in a whining tone:
“Eh, it’s a dog’s life!”
“And where is the justice of it all?”—the greyhound, who had been silent up to this point, began to agitate herself—“You, Mr. Poodle, pardon me, I haven’t the honour of knowing your name.”
“Arto, professor of equilibristics, at your service.” The poodle bowed.
“Well, tell me, Mr. Professor, you have apparently had such great experience, let alone your learning—tell me, where is the higher justice of it all? Are human beings so much more worthy and better than we are, that they are allowed to take advantage of so many cruel privileges with impunity?”
“They are not any better or any more worthy than we are, dear young lady, but they are stronger and wiser,” answered Arto, with some heat. “Oh, I know the morals of these two-legged animals very well.... In the first place, they are greedy—greedier than any dog on earth. They have so much bread and meat and water that all these monsters could be satisfied and well-fed all their lives. But instead of sharing it out, a tenth of them get all the provisions for life into their hands, and not being able to devour it all themselves, they force the remaining nine-tenths to go hungry. Now, tell me, is it possible that a well-fed dog would not share a gnawed bone with his neighbour?”
“He’d share it, of course he would!” agreed all the listeners.
“H’m,” coughed the dog doubtfully.
“And besides that, people are wicked. Who could ever say that one dog would kill another—on account of love or envy or malice? We bite one another sometimes, that’s true. But we don’t take each other’s lives.”
“No, indeed we don’t,” they all affirmed.
“And more than this,” went on the white poodle. “Could one dog make up his mind not to allow another dog to breathe the fresh air, or to be free to express his thoughts as to the arrangements for the happiness of dogs? But men do this.”
“Devil take them!” put in the mouse-coloured dog energetically.
“And, in conclusion, I say that men are hypocrites; they envy one another, they lie, they are inhospitable, cruel.... And yet they rule over us, and will continue to do so ... because it’s arranged like that. It is impossible for us to free ourselves from their authority. All the life of dogs, and all their happiness, is in the hands of men. In our present position each one of us, who has a good master, ought to thank Fate. Only a master can free us from the pleasure of eating a comrade’s flesh, and of imagining that comrade’s feelings when he was being skinned alive.”
The professor’s speech reduced the whole company to a state of melancholy. No other dog could utter a word. They all shivered helplessly, and shook with the joltings of the cart. The big dog whined piteously. Bouton, who was standing next to him, pressed his own body softly up against him.
But soon they felt that the wheels of the cart were passing over sand. In five minutes more they were driven through wide open gates, and they found themselves in the middle of an immense courtyard surrounded by a close paling. Sharp nails were sticking out at the top of the paling. Two hundred dogs, lean and dirty, with drooping tails and a look of melancholy on their faces, wandered about the yard.
The doors of the cage were flung open. All the seven new-comers came forth and instinctively stood together in one group.
“Here, you professor, how do you feel now?” The poodle heard a bark behind him.
He turned round and saw the violet-coloured dog smiling insolently at him.
“Oh, leave me alone,” growled the old poodle. “It’s no business of yours.”
“I only made a remark,” said the other. “You spoke such words of wisdom in the cart, but you made one mistake. Yes, you did.”
“Get away, devil take you! What mistake?”
“About a dog’s happiness. If you like, I’ll show you in whose hands a dog’s happiness lies.”
And suddenly pressing back his ears and extending his tail, the violet dog set out on such a mad career that the old professor of equilibristics could only stand and watch him with open mouth.
“Catch him! Stop him!” shouted the keepers, flinging themselves in pursuit of the escaping dog. But the violet dog had already gained the paling. With one bound he sprang up from the ground and found himself at the top, hanging on by his fore-paws. And in two more convulsive springs he had leaped over the paling, leaving on the nails a good half of his side.
The old white poodle gazed after him for a long time. He understood the mistake he had made.
Nikolai Yevgrafovitch Almazof hardly waited for his wife to open the door to him; he went straight to his study without taking off his hat or coat. His wife knew in a moment by his frowning face and nervously-bitten underlip that a great misfortune had occurred.
She followed him in silence. Almazof stood still for a moment when he reached the study, and stared gloomily into one corner, then he dashed his portfolio out of his hand on to the floor, where it lay wide open, and threw himself into an armchair, irritably snapping his fingers together.
He was a young and poor army officer attending a course of lectures at the staff office academy, and had just returned from a class. To-day he had taken in to the professor his last and most difficult practical work, a survey of the neighbourhood.
So far all his examinations had gone well, and it was only known to God and to his wife what fearful labour they had cost him.... To begin with, his very entrance into the academy had seemed impossible at first. Two years in succession he had failed ignominiously, and only in the third had he by determined effort overcome all hindrances. If it hadn’t been for his wife he would not have had sufficient energy to continue the struggle; he would have given it up entirely. But Verotchka never allowed him to lose heart, she was always encouraging him ... she met every drawback with a bright, almost gay, front. She denied herself everything so that her husband might have all the little things so necessary for a man engaged in mental labour; she was his secretary, draughtsman, reader, lesson-hearer, and note-book all in one.
For five minutes there was a dead silence, broken only by the sorry sound of their old alarm clock, familiar and tiresome ... one, two, three-three—two clear ticks, and the third with a hoarse stammer. Almazof still sat in his hat and coat, turning to one side in his chair.... Vera stood two paces from him, silent also, her beautiful mobile face full of suffering. At length she broke the stillness with the cautiousness a woman might use when speaking at the bedside of a very sick friend:
“Well, Kolya, what about the work? Was it bad?”
He shrugged his shoulders without speaking.
“Kolya, was it rejected? Tell me; we must talk it over together.”
Almazof turned to his wife and began to speak irritably and passionately, as one generally does speak when telling of an insult long endured.
“Yes, yes. They’ve rejected it, if you want to know. Can’t you see they have? It’s all gone to the devil! All that rubbish”—he kicked the portfolio with his foot—“all that rubbish had better be thrown into the fire. That’s your academy. I shall be back in the regiment with a bang next month, disgraced. And all for a filthy spot ... damn it!”
“What spot, Kolya?” asked she. “I don’t understand anything about it.”
She sat down on the side of his chair and put her arm round his neck. He made no resistance, but still continued to stare into the corner with an injured expression.
“What spot was it, Kolya?” asked his wife once more.
“Oh, an ordinary spot—of green paint. You know I sat up until three o’clock last night to finish my drawing. The plan was beautifully done. Everyone said so. Well, I sat there last night and I got so tired that my hand shook, and I made a blot—such a big one.... I tried to erase it, but I only made it worse.... I thought and thought what I had better do, and I made up my mind to put a clump of trees in that place.... It was very successful, and no one could guess there had been a blot. Well, to-day I took it in to the professor. ‘Yes, yes,’ said he, ‘that’s very well. But what have you got here, lieutenant; where have these bushes sprung from?’ Of course, I ought to have told him what had happened. Perhaps he would only have laughed ... but no, he wouldn’t, he’s such an accurate German, such a pedant. So I said, ‘There are some trees growing there.’ ‘Oh, no, no,’ said he. ‘I know this neighbourhood as well as I know the five fingers of my own hand; there can’t be any trees there.’ So, my word against his, we had a great argument about it; many of our officers were there too, listening. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘if you’re so sure that there are trees in this hollow, be so good as to ride over with me to-morrow and see. I’ll prove to you that you’ve either done your work carelessly, or that you’ve copied it from a three versts to the inch map....’”
“But why was he so certain that no bushes were there?”
“Oh, Lord, why? What childish questions you do ask! Because he’s known this district for twenty years; he knows it better than his own bedroom. He’s the most fearful pedant in the world, and a German besides.... Well, of course, he’ll know in the end that I was lying and so discussed the point with him....”
All the time he spoke he kept picking up burnt matches from the ash-tray on the table in front of him, and breaking them to little bits. When he ceased speaking, he threw the pieces on the floor. It was quite evident that, strong man though he was, he was very near weeping.
For a long while husband and wife sat there silent. Then suddenly Verotchka jumped up from her seat.
“Listen, Kolya,” said she. “We must go this very minute. Make haste and get ready.”
Nikolai Yevgrafovitch wrinkled up his face as if he were suffering some intolerable pain.
“Oh, don’t talk nonsense, Vera,” he said. “You don’t think I can go and put matters right by apologising, do you? That would be asking for punishment. Don’t be foolish, please!”
“No, it’s not foolishness,” said Vera, stamping her toot. “Nobody wants you to go and apologise. But, don’t you see, if there aren’t any silly old trees there we’d better go and put some.”
“Put some—trees!” exclaimed Nikolai Yevgrafovitch, his eyes staring.
“Yes, put some there. If you didn’t speak the truth, then you must make it true. Come along, get ready. Give me my hat ... and coat. No, not there; in the cupboard.... Umbrella!”
And while Almazof, finding his objections entirely ignored, began to look for the hat and coat, Vera opened drawers and brought out various little boxes and cases.
“Earrings.... No, they’re no good. We shan’t get anything on them. Ah, here’s this ring with the valuable stone. We’ll have to buy that back some time. It would be a pity to lose it. Bracelet ... they won’t give much for that either, it’s old and bent.... Where’s your silver cigar-case, Kolya?”
In five minutes all their valuables were in her hand-bag, and Vera, dressed and ready, looked round for the last time to assure herself she hadn’t overlooked anything.
“Let us go,” she said at last, resolutely.
“But where?” Almazof tried again to protest. “It’s beginning to get dark already, and the place is ten versts away.”
“Stupid! Come along.”
First of all they went to the pawnshop. The pawnbroker had evidently got accustomed long ago to the sight of people in distress, and could not be touched by it. He was so methodical about his work, and took so long to value the things, that Vera felt she should go crazy. What specially vexed her was that the man should test her ring with acid, and then, after weighing it, he valued it at three roubles only.
“But it’s a real brilliant,” said poor Vera. “It cost thirty-seven roubles, and then it was a bargain.”
The pawnbroker closed his eyes with the air of a man who is frankly bored.
“It’s all the same to us, madam,” said he, putting the next article into the scales. “We don’t take the stones into consideration, only the metals.”
To Vera’s astonishment, her old and bent bracelet was more valuable. Altogether they got about twenty-three roubles, and that was more than was really necessary.
When they got to the gardener’s house, the white Petersburg night had already spread over the heavens, and a pearly light was in the air. The gardener, a Tchekh, a little old man with gold eyeglasses, had only just sat down to supper with his family. He was much surprised at their request, and not altogether willing to take such a late order. He was doubtless suspicious of a practical joke, and answered dryly to Vera’s insistent demands:
“I’m very sorry. But I can’t send my workmen so far at night. If it will do to-morrow morning, I’m quite at your service.”
There was no way out of the difficulty but to tell the man the whole story of the unfortunate blot, and this Verotchka did. He listened doubtfully at first, and was almost unfriendly, but when Vera began to tell him of her plan to plant some bushes on the place, he became more attentive and smiled sympathetically several times.
“Oh, well, it’s not much to do,” he agreed, when Vera had finished her story. “What sort of bushes do you want?”
However, when they came to look at his plants, there was nothing very suitable. The only thing possible to put on the spot was a clump of lilacs.
It was in vain for Almazof to try and persuade his wife to go home. She went all the way with him, and stayed all the time the bushes were planted, feverishly fussing about and hindering the workmen. She only consented to go home when she was assured that the turf under the bushes could not be distinguished from the rest of the grass round about.
Next day Vera felt it impossible to remain in the house. She went out to meet her husband. Quite a long way off she knew, by a slight spring in his walk, that everything had gone well.... True, Almazof was covered in dust, and he could hardly move from weariness and hunger, but his face shone with the triumph of victory.
“It’s all right! Splendid!” cried he when within ten paces of his wife, in answer to the anxious expression on her face. “Just think, we went together to those bushes, and he looked and looked at them—he even plucked a leaf and chewed it. ‘What sort of a tree is this?’ says he.”
“‘I don’t know, your Excellency,’ said I.
“‘It’s a little birch, I suppose,’ says he.
“‘Yes, probably, your Excellency.’”
Then he turned to me and held out his hand.
“‘I beg your pardon, lieutenant,’ he says. ‘I must be getting old, that I didn’t remember those bushes.’ He’s a fine man, that professor, and he knows a lot. I felt quite sorry to deceive him. He’s one of the best professors we have. His learning is simply wonderful. And how quick and accurate he is in marking the plans—marvellous!”
But this meant little to Vera. She wanted to hear over and over again exactly what the professor had said about the bushes. She was interested in the smallest details—the expression on the professor’s face, the tone of his voice when he said he must be growing old, exactly how Kolya felt....
They went home together as if there had been no one in the street except themselves, holding each other by the hand and laughing at nothing. The passers-by stopped to look at them; they seemed such a strange couple.
Never before had Nikolai Yevgrafovitch enjoyed his dinner so much as on that day. After dinner, when Vera brought a glass of tea to him in the study, husband and wife suddenly looked at one another, and both laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” asked Vera.
“Well, why didyoulaugh?” said her husband.
“Oh, only foolishness. I was thinking all about those lilacs. And you?”
“Oh, mine was foolishness too—and the lilacs. I was just going to say that now the lilac will always be my favourite flower....”
“Father Deacon, you’re wasting the candles,” said the deacon’s wife. “It’s time to get up.”
This small, thin, yellow-faced woman treated her husband very harshly. In the school at which she had been educated there had been an opinion that—men were scoundrels, deceivers, and tyrants. But her husband, the deacon, was certainly not a tyrant. He was absolutely in awe of his half-hysterical, half-epileptic, childless wife. The deacon weighed about nine and a half poods[1]of solid flesh; he had a broad chest like the body of a motor-car, an awful voice, and with it all that gentle condescension of manner which often marks the behaviour of extraordinarily strong people in their relations towards the weak.
[1]A pood is 40 Russian lbs., about 36 lbs. English.
[1]A pood is 40 Russian lbs., about 36 lbs. English.
It always took the deacon a long time to get his voice in order. This occupation—an unpleasant, long-drawn-out torture—is, of course, well known to all those who have to sing in public: the rubbing with cocaine, the burning with caustic, the gargling with boracic acid. And, still lying upon his bed, Father Olympus began to try his voice.
“Via ... kmm! Via-a-a! Alleluia, alleluia. ... Oba-che ... kmm.... Ma-ma....”
“There’s no sound in my voice,” he said to himself. “Vla-di-ko bla-go-slo-ve-e-e.... Km....”
Like all famous singers, he was given to be anxious about his voice. It is well known that actors grow pale and cross themselves before they go on to the stage. And Father Olympus suffered from this vice of fear. Yet he was the only man in the town, and possibly in all Russia, who could make his voice resound in the old dark cathedral church, gleaming with ancient gold and mosaic.
He alone could fill all the corners of the old building with his powerful voice, and when he intoned the funeral service every crystal lustre in the candelabras trembled and jingled with the sound.
His prim wife brought him in a glass of weak tea with lemon in it, and, as usual on Sunday mornings, a glass of vodka. Olympus tried his voice once more: “Mi ... mi ... fa.... Mi-ro-no-citsi.... Here, mother,” called he to his wife, “give mereon the harmonium.”
His wife sounded a long melancholy note. “Km ... km.... Pharaoh and his chariots.... No, no, I can’t do it, my voice has gone. The devil must have got into me from that writer, what’s his name?...”
Father Olympus was very fond of reading; he read much and indiscriminately, but paid very little attention to the names of the authors. His seminary education, based chiefly on learning by heart, on reading “rubrics,” on learning indispensable quotations from the fathers of the Church, had developed his memory to an unusual degree. In order to get by heart a whole page of complicated casuistical reasoning, such as that of St. Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Basil the Great or St. John Chrysostom, it was quite sufficient for him to run his eye over the lines, and he would remember them. It was a student from the Bethany Academy who brought him books to read, and only the evening before he had given him a delightful romance, a picture of life in the Caucasus, of soldiers, Cossacks, Tchetchenians, and how they lived there and fought one another, drank wine, married, hunted.
The reading of this tale had disturbed the elementary soul of the deacon. He had read it three times over, and often during the reading had laughed and wept emotionally, clenching his fists and turning his huge body from one side to the other in his chair. He continually asked himself, “Would it not have been better to have been a hunter, a trapper, a fisherman, a horseman, anything rather than a clergyman?”
He was always a little later in coming into the cathedral than he ought to have been. Just like a famous baritone at a theatre. As he came through the south door into the sanctuary, on this Sunday morning, he tried his voice for the last time. “Km ... km.... I can singre,” he thought. “But that scoundrel will certainly give me the tone ondoh.Never mind, I must change it to my note, and the choir will be obliged to follow.”
There awoke in him that pride which always slumbers in the breast of a public favourite, for he was spoilt by the whole town; even the street-boys used to collect together to stare at him with a similar veneration to that with which they gazed into the immense mouth of the brass helicon in the military band on the boulevard.
The bishop entered and was solemnly installed in his seat. He wore his mitre a little on one side. Two sub-deacons stood beside him with censers, swinging them harmoniously. The clergy, in bright festival robes, stood around. Two priests brought forward from the altar the ikons of the Saviour and the Virgin-Mother, and placed them on a stand before the people.
The cathedral was an ancient building, and had a pulpit of carved oak like that of a Catholic church. It stood close up to the wall, and was reached by a winding staircase. This was the deacon’s place.
Slowly, trying each step as he went, and carefully resting his hands on the balustrade—he was always afraid of breaking something accidentally—the deacon went up into the pulpit. Then, clearing his throat and nose and expectorating, he struck the tuning-fork, passed deliberately fromdohtore,and began:
“Bless us, most reverend Father.”
“Now, you scoundrel,” he thought to himself, apostrophising the leader of the choir; “you won’t dare to change the tone in the presence of the bishop.” At that moment he felt, with pleasure, that his voice sounded much better than usual; it was quite easy to pass from one note to another, and its soft depth of tone caused all the air in the cathedral to vibrate.
It was the Orthodox service for the first week in Lent, and, at first, Father Olympus had not much work. The reader trumpeted out the psalms indistinctly; he was a deacon from the academy, a future professor of homiletics, and he snuffled.
Father Olympus roared out from time to time, “Let us pray.” He stood there on his raised platform, immense, in his stiff vestment of gilt brocade, his mane of grey-black hair hanging on his shoulders, and every now and then he tried his voice quietly. The church was full to the doors with sentimental old peasant women and sturdy grey-bearded peasants.
“Strange,” thought Olympus to himself suddenly, “but every one of these women’s heads, if I look at it from the side, reminds me inevitably either of the head of a fish or of a hen’s head. Even the deaconess, my wife....”
His attention, however, was not diverted from the service. He followed it all along in his seventeenth-century missal. The prayers came to an end: “Almighty God, Master and Creator of all living.” And at last, “Amen.”
Then began the affirmation of Orthodoxy. “Who is as great as the Lord, as our God? Thou art the God who alone doest wonders.” The chant had many turns in it, and was not particularly clear. Generally during the first week in Lent there follows, at this point, the ritual of anathema, which can be altered or omitted as may be thought fit by the bishop. There is a list of persons to be anathematised for special reasons, Mazeppa is cursed, Stenka Razin, Arius the iconoclast, the old-believer Avvakum, etc., etc.
But the deacon was not quite himself to-day. Certainly he must have been a little upset by the vodka his wife had given him that morning. For some reason or other he could not get the story which he had read the previous night out of his mind. He kept seeing clear and vivid pictures of a beautiful, simple, and boundlessly attractive life. Almost mechanically he went through the Creed, chanted the Amen, and proclaimed according to an ancient custom to an old and solemn tone: “This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of our fathers, this is the Orthodox faith, this is the universal faith, this faith is ours.”
The archbishop was a great formalist, a pedant, and a somewhat eccentric man. He never allowed a word to be dropped out of the text of the canon of our thrice-blessed Father Andrew of Crete, or from the funeral service or from any other rite. And Father Olympus, imperturbably causing the cathedral to vibrate with his lion’s roar, and making the lustres of the candelabra jingle and sound as they moved, cursed, anathematised and excommunicated from the Church the iconoclasts, all the ancient heretics from Arius onward, all those accepting the teaching of Ital, of the monk Nil, of Constantine Bulgaris and Irinik, of Varlaam and Akindin, of Gerontius and Isaac Agrir; cursed those who insulted the Church, all Mahometans, Dissenters and Judaizers; cursed the reproachers of the festival of the Annunciation, smugglers, offenders of widows and orphans, the Old-Believers, the rebels and traitors, Grishka, Otrepief, Timoshka Akundinof, Stenka Razin, Ivashka Mazeppa, Emelka Pugachof, as well as all those who uphold any teaching contrary to that of the Orthodox faith.
Then the extent of the curse was proclaimed: denial of the blessings of redemption, exclusion from the Holy Sacraments, and expulsion from the assembly of the holy fathers and their inheritance.
Curses were pronounced on those who do not think that the Orthodox Tsar was raised to the throne by the special will of God, when at his anointing, at the commencement of his high calling, the holy oil was poured out upon him; also on those daring to stir up sedition against him; on those who abuse and blaspheme the holy ikons. And to each of these proclamations the choir responded in a mournful wail, tender angelic voices giving the response, “Anathema.”
The women had long been weeping hysterically.
The deacon was about to end by singing the “Eternal Memory” for all those departed this life in the true faith, when the psalm-singer brought him a little note from the priest, telling him that his Eminence the archbishop had ordered that Count Leo Tolstoy was to be anathematised.
The deacon’s throat was sore from much reading. But he cleared his throat by a cough, and began once more: “Bless us, most reverend Father.” He guessed, rather than heard, the feeble mutterings of the aged prelate:
“The proto-deacon will now, by the grace of God, pronounce a curse upon a blasphemer and apostate from the faith of Christ, and expel from the Holy Sacraments of the Church Count Leo Tolstoy. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
“Amen,” sang the choir.
Father Olympus felt his hair stand on end. It seemed to stick out on all sides, and become stiff and painful as if turning into steel wire. And at that moment his memory recalled with extraordinary clearness the tender words of the story[1]he had read the previous night:
“Rousing himself, Yeroshka raised his head and watched the moths fluttering around the flickering flame of his candle and falling therein.“‘Fool! fool!’ said he to one. ‘Whither are you flying? Fool! fool!’ He got up and drove the moths away with his clumsy fingers.“‘You’ll burn yourself, little fool; come, fly away, there’s plenty of room here,’ said he, coaxing one of them with gentle voice, and striving to catch hold of it by the wings and send it away. ‘You’ll destroy yourself, and then I shall be sorry for you.’”
“Rousing himself, Yeroshka raised his head and watched the moths fluttering around the flickering flame of his candle and falling therein.
“‘Fool! fool!’ said he to one. ‘Whither are you flying? Fool! fool!’ He got up and drove the moths away with his clumsy fingers.
“‘You’ll burn yourself, little fool; come, fly away, there’s plenty of room here,’ said he, coaxing one of them with gentle voice, and striving to catch hold of it by the wings and send it away. ‘You’ll destroy yourself, and then I shall be sorry for you.’”